When I first started playing Minecraft, and reading through the forums, the idea of building a bed and having that be your spawn point seemed brilliant. I LOVED the idea.
But after playing with a friend last night, that changed. I was watching him interact with his world, and there were certain instances where he mentioned the possibility of "just dying and respawning to get back home". Seemed reasonable.
But I thought about my own game that I've been playing for the past couple of weeks... I have yet to die. I have guarded my life carefully, and I feel that I enjoy the game much more with a healthy dose of fear regarding Death.
I'm not sure how far from my spawn point I wandered before I built my home. So, of course, I built a large tower that can be seen from miles away. But even then, it may be very difficult to find it, if I wandered far. I won't know until I die.
If I was going to die and just lose my belongings and then respawn right in the confines of my castle, meh, not a big deal. But if I have to travel a long way, well... that just adds a great twist to the game. Of course, you can build your home right next to your spawn point, but then you lose the fun of choosing a great location that fits for what you want to build. Build a minecart if you need to. Line the trail with fences and torches. But whatever it is, make me work for it. That's the fun of the game.
I love that dynamic.
I really hope that Notch doesn't change this. While bed spawn points are a fun idea, if you look a bit deeper, it really will take away from an important, but subtle, element of the game.
I agree that it's better to value your life. I've once lost an entire haul of gear and ores because I walked into lava, and I haven't touched that world since. However, the single spawn point makes my compass all but useless, I want to be able to set my compass point to point to my base and storage boxes, to the entrances of caves, etc. One spawn point kills this utility.
Wouldn't a better solution be to just be able to set the direction that your compass points to? Like you could build a red-stone magnetic signal type device that you put inside your home?
Notch wants to encourage people to be adventurous. Being limited to only one spawn point does the opposite of that.
revelation acquired
Minecraft is the OPPOSITE of the game "lose/lose". Where in lose/lose you shoot aliens to DESTROY files on your computer, but in Minecraft you explore worlds to CREATE files on your computer.
While i agree with the OP about the fear of death being there with the set spawn point. It does, every moment you leave the safety of your home, you have the chance to die and end up (possibly) miles away, with no way to know how to get home.
But thats just it, spending hours on your home just to get blown to kingdom-come by a creeper and loosing it all.. is a steep cost. And it takes away from the want to be adventurous. The ideas above with the compasses pointing to a selected point is a great idea though :biggrin.gif:
I agree that settable spawns would add to the game, but i see it being heavily abused. People would basically use it as save states, eliminating any real threat since you can just spawn around the corner with full health again.
Although, i would like to see something like a way-point flag. A special (and relatively expensive) one time use item that acts as a spawn point. The game determines which flag you are closest to, and it spawns you there, sparing you from the painfully long haul of going back to the spawn point, but cant be abused by a regular user without a very high cost.
Maybe it could be crafted kind of like a flag, like so. (we really could use a bigger crafting table for this.)
The diamond top on the flagpole makes it cost large enough for users to be careful with. It also forces the miner to stick around the spawn for a bit to mine for the needed diamond.
I agree with the notion that dying should be something to avoid, but getting lost when you respawn is not something that is hard to prevent. If you spent days walking in one direction before you built a base, you would just walk a few more days to get back.If you travelled multiple directions you can put towers at each turning point.
What a bed would allow you to do is "babyguard" your player inventory. IE I just found a diamond deposit above a lake of lava, I would move my bed close to the edge, and try to make sure I could get out of the lava if I somehow fell in. when I died from the fire I could instantly collect my resources.
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Brilliant Troll. This guy is a mad genius
Quote from Silvermatt »
omg guiz dis is amazing it so sexi i wanna penetrate the shep so hard look at it yilow cilir
notch why u do diz yo so mean i mean look at it it so sad T~T
EDITING OP WITH PICTURES FROM THREAD:
"What a bed would allow you to do is "babyguard" your player inventory. IE I just found a diamond deposit above a lake of lava, I would move my bed close to the edge, and try to make sure I could get out of the lava if I somehow fell in. when I died from the fire I could instantly collect my resources."
1. Craftable spawn point block, a "bed", "gravestone", "soul diamond block" whatever. I'm partial to the gravestone, the recipe would probably look something like this:
2. May not be placed within >256 blocks of eachother, so you can't just spam them, possibly above-ground only.
3. Do not refund materials when destroyed.
4. When you die you spawn at the closest one.
In this way I can boat to a new island, establish a home and create a place to spawn before I go out exploring the land and caves but I can't spam gravestones at every cave intersection.
For PvP purposes, someone defending his home should be at the advantage, but you can fight to his gravestone and smash it.
I can imagine guild / clan castles having whole graveyards which are guarded by the best defenses and traps, making an assault a serious undertaking (as it should be). And seige situations where the attackers construct a staging point outside with gravestones.
I like changing your spawnpoint with beds, it isn't a forced thing for people who want to play hardcore HAVE to use and most people will only build one bed in their base.
if their is gonna be a craft-able spawn point it needs to cost a ridiculous amount, and once place can only be destroyed you don't get your materials back, Because changing your spawn point should be a BIG deal in game, thus it should cost a lot.
something like
where iron is ironblock and gold is goldblock.
and if you need to change ur spawn use a mod and cheat change it.
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"I rather sit on a pumpkin and be alone then be crowded on a velvet cushion." ~Thoreau
At first I made a path of torches to lead me from my spawn to my house, but that is just a pain in the ass. It just doesn't seem enjoyable to make time wasting walks back to my corpse when I could instead just have a reasonable one from my chosen spawn point.
You should be able to choose your spawn point but only once in the entire game save, just so it couldn't be abused to set your spawn next to were you're currently mining just in case something goes wrong.
But until then, NBTedit =/
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Concepts I like and think should be encouraged:
-Exploration
-Creating one or more secure semi-permanant bases
-Taking risks
Concepts I don't like and think should be discouraged:
- Staying in one place
-Trivializing danger
Problem:
Current respawn mechanic does not encourage exploration or risk taking and encourages you to camp out at your respawn point.
Soloution:
A way to move your respawn points, preferably with beds.
Which in turn creates spawn point abuse by simply building a small chamber with a bed in any cave system every once in a while, so if you die you lose hardly any progress as you are only a small trip away.
"What a bed would allow you to do is "babyguard" your player inventory. IE I just found a diamond deposit above a lake of lava, I would move my bed close to the edge, and try to make sure I could get out of the lava if I somehow fell in. when I died from the fire I could instantly collect my resources."
Which is so incredibly lame and girly.
^
I
I
Implying I would do this if I could, that you can play in a "lame" way on a sandbox game, and that being girly is wrong or something to avoid.
Nice, three wrong statements in a single sentence.
*ON TOPIC* A moveable spawn point is something that the game could easily survive without, but allows much largers area to be explored. You could make railways to travel somewhere quickly, but on a world with 8 times the surface area of earth it would take a while for some people (like me, who thought respawning would be in the general area of where you died, but on the surface)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Brilliant Troll. This guy is a mad genius
Quote from Silvermatt »
omg guiz dis is amazing it so sexi i wanna penetrate the shep so hard look at it yilow cilir
notch why u do diz yo so mean i mean look at it it so sad T~T
EDITING OP WITH PICTURES FROM THREAD:
Notch has mentioned including some "endgame" content. I see "mobile spawn points" as a "midgame" addition. I agree that they should be relatively expensive to produce, and perhaps certain conditions should be met as well. For example, the spawn point needs to be at a certain level or higher on the map (no adminium level spawn points), and needs an open view of the sky (no cavern spawn points), only one spawn point is allowed, it needs to be recreated from scratch every time you want to move it, etc.
My biggest issue with the compass is that it's only really useful when you're very far away from your spawn point (so it can actually act like a real compass). When you're close to it, it changes direction too quickly, making it difficult to use for getting your bearings unless all you're doing is heading back to your spawn.
I like the idea of a 'hearthstone' that you can spawn at. Either by activating it or you automatically use whichever is closer, I'm fine either way. But I want it expensive to discourage lameness.
where = gold block.
Expensive enough to not make it worth cheesing caves but still doable with effort.
Destructing it produces nothing.
Maybe start the game with one in your inventory so you can search for a nice place to start.
But after playing with a friend last night, that changed. I was watching him interact with his world, and there were certain instances where he mentioned the possibility of "just dying and respawning to get back home". Seemed reasonable.
But I thought about my own game that I've been playing for the past couple of weeks... I have yet to die. I have guarded my life carefully, and I feel that I enjoy the game much more with a healthy dose of fear regarding Death.
I'm not sure how far from my spawn point I wandered before I built my home. So, of course, I built a large tower that can be seen from miles away. But even then, it may be very difficult to find it, if I wandered far. I won't know until I die.
If I was going to die and just lose my belongings and then respawn right in the confines of my castle, meh, not a big deal. But if I have to travel a long way, well... that just adds a great twist to the game. Of course, you can build your home right next to your spawn point, but then you lose the fun of choosing a great location that fits for what you want to build. Build a minecart if you need to. Line the trail with fences and torches. But whatever it is, make me work for it. That's the fun of the game.
I love that dynamic.
I really hope that Notch doesn't change this. While bed spawn points are a fun idea, if you look a bit deeper, it really will take away from an important, but subtle, element of the game.
Cheers.
revelation acquired
Minecraft is the OPPOSITE of the game "lose/lose". Where in lose/lose you shoot aliens to DESTROY files on your computer, but in Minecraft you explore worlds to CREATE files on your computer.
But thats just it, spending hours on your home just to get blown to kingdom-come by a creeper and loosing it all.. is a steep cost. And it takes away from the want to be adventurous. The ideas above with the compasses pointing to a selected point is a great idea though :biggrin.gif:
Although, i would like to see something like a way-point flag. A special (and relatively expensive) one time use item that acts as a spawn point. The game determines which flag you are closest to, and it spawns you there, sparing you from the painfully long haul of going back to the spawn point, but cant be abused by a regular user without a very high cost.
Maybe it could be crafted kind of like a flag, like so. (we really could use a bigger crafting table for this.)
The diamond top on the flagpole makes it cost large enough for users to be careful with. It also forces the miner to stick around the spawn for a bit to mine for the needed diamond.
What a bed would allow you to do is "babyguard" your player inventory. IE I just found a diamond deposit above a lake of lava, I would move my bed close to the edge, and try to make sure I could get out of the lava if I somehow fell in. when I died from the fire I could instantly collect my resources.
Which is so incredibly lame and girly.
1. Craftable spawn point block, a "bed", "gravestone", "soul diamond block" whatever. I'm partial to the gravestone, the recipe would probably look something like this:
2. May not be placed within >256 blocks of eachother, so you can't just spam them, possibly above-ground only.
3. Do not refund materials when destroyed.
4. When you die you spawn at the closest one.
In this way I can boat to a new island, establish a home and create a place to spawn before I go out exploring the land and caves but I can't spam gravestones at every cave intersection.
For PvP purposes, someone defending his home should be at the advantage, but you can fight to his gravestone and smash it.
I can imagine guild / clan castles having whole graveyards which are guarded by the best defenses and traps, making an assault a serious undertaking (as it should be). And seige situations where the attackers construct a staging point outside with gravestones.
My Pathfinder Campaign for the denizens of MCF: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1939035-where-are-we-sandbox-pathfinder-campaign-ooc/
something like
where iron is ironblock and gold is goldblock.
and if you need to change ur spawn use a mod and cheat change it.
At first I made a path of torches to lead me from my spawn to my house, but that is just a pain in the ass. It just doesn't seem enjoyable to make time wasting walks back to my corpse when I could instead just have a reasonable one from my chosen spawn point.
You should be able to choose your spawn point but only once in the entire game save, just so it couldn't be abused to set your spawn next to were you're currently mining just in case something goes wrong.
But until then, NBTedit =/
Intel® Core™ i5-750 @ 4.0 GHz
g.SKILL® Pi™ Series 17600CL7D @ 2000 MHz
2 x Sapphire® Radeon™ HD 5770s
KINGWIN® LZ-850W Modular PSU
2 x OCZ® Vertex LE SSDs
3 x Western Digital® 1TB HDDs
Corsair® 700D Custom Case Mod
Concepts I like and think should be encouraged:
-Exploration
-Creating one or more secure semi-permanant bases
-Taking risks
Concepts I don't like and think should be discouraged:
- Staying in one place
-Trivializing danger
Problem:
Current respawn mechanic does not encourage exploration or risk taking and encourages you to camp out at your respawn point.
Soloution:
A way to move your respawn points, preferably with beds.
Which in turn creates spawn point abuse by simply building a small chamber with a bed in any cave system every once in a while, so if you die you lose hardly any progress as you are only a small trip away.
^
I
I
Implying I would do this if I could, that you can play in a "lame" way on a sandbox game, and that being girly is wrong or something to avoid.
Nice, three wrong statements in a single sentence.
*ON TOPIC* A moveable spawn point is something that the game could easily survive without, but allows much largers area to be explored. You could make railways to travel somewhere quickly, but on a world with 8 times the surface area of earth it would take a while for some people (like me, who thought respawning would be in the general area of where you died, but on the surface)
My biggest issue with the compass is that it's only really useful when you're very far away from your spawn point (so it can actually act like a real compass). When you're close to it, it changes direction too quickly, making it difficult to use for getting your bearings unless all you're doing is heading back to your spawn.
Really?
where = gold block.
Expensive enough to not make it worth cheesing caves but still doable with effort.
Destructing it produces nothing.
Maybe start the game with one in your inventory so you can search for a nice place to start.